In
Peace Pact, Hendrickson works to
argue that the best way of achieving true peace is through a system of
application of shared security. His model for this is the foundation of the
federal system in the infancy of the United States and how that incorporation
of different political entities with a moral claim to sovereignty, the states,
into a union able to also morally claim significant sovereignty not only over
itself but also over members of the union. Hendrickson does note that
federalism takes on many if not theoretically infinite forms of balance between
"state" and "federal" power (if we are to take this balance
as a sliding scale between two extremes, one being "state" and the
other being "federal").
Further
into his argument, he claims that the best possible form is one where the
emphasis of security is placed further on the side of "state"
security than on "federal" security in order to avoid the pitfalls of
realism (which would lead to appeasing the security concerns generated by the
system and not necessarily the actors) and complete hegemony (which would by
definition curtail rights of individuals within each state). In order for
Hendrickson's argument to hold its own however, there will need to be some
review of whether or not his intention to put emphasis on state and individual
security actually coincides with state and individual motives for security; put
simply, the rationale behind what gives moral backing to a certain system of
security must be a response to the motives and ideas of actors (state and/or
individuals), otherwise there is too great a detachment between the need for
security and the physical security itself. The risk here then is that not only
is the full worth of the individual
sidestepped but the creation of a federal union begins to look increasingly
more like a modernized version of bandwagoning among members of the union, all
vying to gain the most benefits for the least amount of costs.
However,
before any consideration is made to evaluate Hendrickson's argument, it would
prove useful to be able to describe it in the best detail possible. To do this,
it is important to note some general axioms that Hendrickson will be working
with in order to ground his argument. One of these axioms is the idea that
people generally if not exclusively look out for their own security and the
security of their property. That being said, it is also a general axiom that
people tend to congregate in some manner in order to provide a better route to
gain said security. Hendrickson's argument here is technically an elaborate
extension of the "state of nature" thought process with regards to
individuals. The specific change here is that he is applying libertarian
principles to foreign policy, specifically how states should see each other
given the fact that the interests of the individuals have a moral standing such
that they should be preserved.
Hendrickson
is quick to point out two polar opposites of world organization among states,
that of International Anarchy (IA) and that of Universal Empire (UE). The two
concepts are simple to understand; IA is focused solely on a "state of
nature" amongst states, with varying degrees of cooperation along its
spectrum, whereas UE is the "Hobbesian" answer of a sovereign
government that rules others in the world in order to avoid problems. Each
model however has significant blocks to rights of individuals.
IA
has far too much conflict sewn into its system's fiber to ensure any sort of
peace of mind, let alone establish the right amount of security of one's person
and belongings. Even in times of alliance and relative peace (should Locke's
state of nature be taken over Hobbes'), the uncertainty of a system ripe for
war would itself lower quality of individual rights, and make them almost null
and void (what is the point of embracing these rights if at any moment they
could be trampled upon in times of war?).
UE
on the other hand has the general fear that the bigger a government gets and
the more rights it claims in order to properly function under its own decree
the less rights individuals will actually have and less power will be had by
those rights that do filter through if any at all. In Hendrickson's comparative
model, individuals are essentially caught between a rock and a hard place when
it comes to protecting their rights from the volatility of a truly
international system. In looking at one direction they see war and strife,
whereas in the opposite they see limited rights and a possible oppressive
government.
It
is at this point that Hendrickson points out, much to the joy of these troubled
individuals, that this spectrum is not the only possible system on which an
international order can run on. In fact, there is historical evidence found in
the exact founding of the United States that provides a blue print for how to
approach such dire security concerns. More so, when this system is blown up to
scale the international order, even that of today, the different components fit
in to size the bigger and more robust groups without changing the impact on
individual rights. Hendrickson here of course is talking about a federal system
of government that sprung up in the soon-to-be states of the United States.
A
federal union was not to be founded on conflict or control, but rather on only
cooperation, such that rights of the individual would be then forced to take
center stage. Even at the time of the creation of these circumstances, this
realization was felt in of all places, Great Britain, where Burke recognized
the ultimate struggle between legitimacy of government and individual freedom
(Hendrickson 86) was heading on a collision course with state interests; in
this case his own. Perhaps more crucially was the recognition on the part of
the colonials themselves of this very fact and the subsequent worry of how
exactly to get various colonies, each with their own unique demographics,
social organization, and political ambitions to avoid " 'discord and total
disunion' " (Hendrickson, Dickinson, 108).
Epistemological
epiphanies aside, the course for federalization was set in the hopes of
preventing the colonies from devolving into either IA by allowing their lot in
the new world to remain a European playground (or worse have the colonies turn
forces on themselves) or into UE under British rule. To anchor the logistical
push for a federal system, a moral ground was taken with regards to what
philosophy best embodied the interests of the union as well as the interests of
the individuals within it. Classical realism to the founders obviously was out
of the question given who they were fighting against, and Kantian Perpetual
Peace, while very attractive, did not address the issue of separate states and
their willing "cooperation while
not submitting" (Hendrickson 270) to a higher union. Although this was the
general case in the colonies at the time, the way that history turned out to be
showed precisely how awkward this system would have been had it been
implemented in the colonies.
With
social and political bickering across colonial lines, the effect of
"automatic cooperation" as Kant described it would not have worked.
So instead the founders adopted an idea of an "international
society", one where states are treated in a way that turns them into
knowledgeable, cost-effective, and poised actors on the world stage (Hendrickson
278). This may at first sound a bit utopian in nature, but it is the only
theory regarding international relations that could actually foster a healthy
federal union, mainly because again, the tenets of "good faith,
sovereignty, and peaceful settlement of disputes" reflects the morality of
individual rights. With this piece, Hendrickson comes full circle from his
discussion of the histories of the founding of the United States to his
ultimate goal of embracing a theory of international relations that embodies the
push for a robust protection of individual rights.
In
order to place individual rights at the top of any sort of international
organization of states, there must be a push for a federal union among states
who value individual rights. More importantly, in order for this said union to
not fall apart, it must live in a world where the major actors, crucially those
who support it, act in concert with an "International Society" that
extends the moral force of individual rights into what would otherwise be a
"global state of nature" among states. Without this construct,
individual rights would either or cease to exist under a strongman's
government, or count for nothing in a world filled with perpetual war.
The
main problem with Hendrickson's argument is two-fold; a primary concern
regarding logistics and then a secondary concern regarding the true intentions
of the call for security given the lapses in logistics. To address the first
part of the objection, we must again divide the load in two. The first problem
with the logistics of Hendrickson's argument concerns the feasibility of
creating a true federal union. Hendrickson uses the United States as a shining
example of what people can do if they truly embody the spirit of shared
security through federal union, but a great deal of credit for that happening
must be given to the general cohesiveness of American culture. Creating a
federal union requires that a lot of trust be given to other individuals and groups
within the union, much more so at least than the IA or UE models. Keeping that
in mind, it is a lot easier to trust people who are culturally similar than
others who may be culturally distant.
This
is not to say that some cultures cannot handle the prospects of federal union,
rather that xenophobia is part of every culture to some extent and effects of
"othering" (the generation of an outside and consequently strange,
untrustworthy, not completely equal group by the prime-group that identifies
itself as superior for self justifying reasons) will always make giving trust
to other cultural groups difficult. This is made especially worse if there are
historical dark spots between two different cultures or states.
However,
even if there was to be an effort of reconciliation between two cultures that
managed to instill full trust, the prospects of trying to work across different
languages and cultures makes the logistical feasibility much harder than trying
to work within only one culture. The United States were fortunate in this case
because although the North-South split was becoming apparent well before the
Civil War, there was no language divide, nor was there a problem of
identification as something other than Americans, only their sense of rights
divided an otherwise homogenous group.
The
second and more structural problem that Hendrickson stumbles upon is the
question of what a federal union actually happens to become once it is
installed. Hendrickson generally proposes that the success of shared security
among the United States is that states with their own declared sovereignty and
peoples who identified themselves as part of those particular groups based on
their own personal geo-political locations willingly decided to fall under the
wings of a much greater power in search for security and stability, and more so
to avoid future conflict.
More
still, the creation of this coalition between independent states and a greater
power also established a signal of alliance against outside powers looking to
expand their own lands and holdings. Hendrickson calls this a federative
system, but it sounds terribly close to an effect of "bandwagoning" (term reserved for
when small states who cannot ensure their own safety form security blocks under
a greater organizational power in order to increase regional security and deter
possible attacks from outsiders). Just because the United States federal
government was not an established state itself, it acted as one byways of
constitutional connection to all the individual states. If anything, the
federative system that Hendrickson talks about is actually the world's most
condensed episode of bandwagoning, where the coalition of states in an alliance
form the greater power and presently give political acceptance of its greater
collective security.
If
this is the case, then the states did not form a union in order to cooperate,
but instead formed the union ad-hoc given that there was no other major power
to align with on the continent to sway away the remaining Spanish, French and
British settlements in North America. For the states, the only way to create
regional security was not to cooperate in establishing a federal union, but
instead to construct quite literally from scratch a political entity that could
be big enough to rival the European powers still left on the continent, but
that could not in any way turn on the small states given its hollow, state-less
structure.
Given
these flaws of unfeasibility amongst Hendrickson's argument, it follows that
not only is the structure of the argument wrong, but so too is the actual
intention of creating this flawed "federative system". Without a real
sense of cooperation, we cannot go on to say that the founders followed any
sort of "international Society" when thinking about international
relations, rather they followed a strict Realist structure where the state
level security was placed above the security of the individual , clearly not
embodying the libertarian tenets of personal freedom and independence. The
federative system that is shown here is not one that embodies the need to
establish some sort of accountability on the part of the individuals that make
up the state, but instead it is one that recognizes more traditional Realist
threats like issues of balance of power and relative strength among North
American powers.
Historically
it makes sense that the founders would tend to side more often than not within
the mode of International Anarchy given what they knew about the threats of a
Universal Empire. Although IA was the other side of the same coin, it was the
side of the coin that the states felt more capable of controlling at their own
will; put simply, it is easier to manage a system that one adapts to the
structure of the states (establish an American influenced system of states in
North America) than a system that forces structures of the states to mold into
place. More broadly, any sort of federative system that emulates what happened
in the United States runs a real risk of becoming a bandwagoning system as
well.
In
fact, in a system of states where language and culture act more as dividers
instead of connectors, identifying an outside threat could fill that slot to
motivate countries to come together, but once that idea is established, the
importance of the security system switches immediately from protecting
individual rights to protecting states from falling prey to outside threats,
and the switch from cooperation to IA is complete.
There
is however one major consideration to be observed before Hendrickson's argument
can be fully measured to either immediately pertain to individual rights or not.
Hendrickson's system may very well bend to the stimuli of a system that
embodies IA, especially when it may not be the decision of the federal union
being created to do so (if nobody else is willing to see the world any
differently, deciding to not "play by the rules" could leave any
political entity at a disadvantage). But even though it may bend, it does not
take anything away from its primary objective of protecting individual rights,
mostly because it is an ends-based approach, not a means-based approach.
Essentially, if the state is secure, then so too are the rights and security of
the individuals that live inside it, and so the motivation for security and the
motivation for establishing a federative system still remains that which
protects individual interests.
Whether
or not the world around the federative system chooses to act in a more
traditionally belligerent fashion does not matter, so long as the state that is
established manages to end up with a place that respects individual rights then
the security system is a success. With that in mind, it is possible to see just
how even by appeasing the state-level interests and not directly approaching
the individual level interests a federative system is able to have a true moral
backing of its mission to protect individual rights. With a secure state comes
also the possibility to embrace whatever sort of international theory structure
the state wants to uphold, in the case of the colonies the "International
Society".
Crucially,
a structure like the "International Society" would have a hard time
upholding its values of acting in good faith and resolving issues peacefully in
a shark-tank as it were, so generating enough state-level security by way of a
federative system creates a necessary positive feedback loop that propagates
the core of an "International Society". Better still a core bent on
understanding and good faith would also make great strides in alleviating the
pressures of cultural differences should a federative system be adopted in less
homogenous zones of humankind, thereby relieving some of the feasibility
concerns related to the simple logistics of the federative system. This is not
to say that a federative system with an applied "International
Society" structure behind it would cure all cultural differences; it would
simply make them small enough to not affect the entire system, leaving it just
as strong as if there were no differences to begin with.
So
in essence, the protection of the state at the state level is not something to
bludgeon Hendrickson's argument, but rather something with which scope can be
used to understand precisely what gives it moral gravitas. At the end of the
day, if the main goal is to protect individual security, then the means by
which one arrives at such an end (unless of course truly objectively evil)
become mere sideshows pitted against the main attraction. With state security
comes individual security, and with individual security comes the ability to
safely choose what sort of theory of international relations is the most
beneficial to a culture that values acts of good faith and peaceful solutions
rather than being forced to adapt to whatever structure has developed outside
the borders. That is the true motivation behind what creates freedom in this
sort of structure, that by choosing it individuals coming together can choose
what their own world, in this case their world of international relations,
looks like rather than being slaves to its own whim, even as brutish and
vicious as it may be.
This
may very well be the loophole through which Hendrickson makes his argument work
even when the perspective of analysis is changed from individual level to state
level, but overall the argument really cannot stand against the strong
connection between his federative system and ad-hoc bandwagoning. Ignoring the
true moral intentions of the founders aside, which in reality cannot be
completely inferred by their actions but only partially inferred, the
establishment of the United States which held many powers over individual
states would make little sense if the true goal of each and every state was
sovereignty through individual rights. If individual rights were the main
concern of each state then willfully submitting to a power greater than the
states themselves would have been erroneous to say the least considering the
states' collective knowledge accumulated as colonies regarding power structures
and regional sovereignty.
Instead,
it makes much more sense to approach the founding of the United States as the
founding of a friendly pole of power for the smaller states in a rather nasty
neighborhood at the time. In essence, all federations come about in this
manner, when smaller states that need a heightened level of security but cannot
bandwagon with other poles of influence in their immediate vicinity for
whatever reason come together to form a "shadow pole of influence".
The
roots of modern Germany are found in the exact same circumstances as those of
the early American states; surrounded by powers much greater than themselves,
the German speaking states in central Europe in 1815 formed a federation in
order to create some stability and security in an otherwise very hostile part
of the world. Surely, the individual security was heightened for the people of
the states that took part of the first Confederation and the North German
Confederation that followed it, but in both cases the central security of the
states came before any mention of constitution making or traditional
federalization. To add more to the list of commonalities between American and
German federalization, out of the security pact, a new nation was born, that of
Germany which before was only contested between Prussia and Austria. The same
happened with the United States where being an "American" came into light
well after the War of Independence.
All
these pieces of evidence make it rather clear that the focus of federalization
was never to establish security for individuals and their rights; if that had
been the case then federalized Germany would have adopted a form of government
with a more robust idea of suffrage
which would have prevented the North German Confederation to become an empire.
If Hendrickson's case for a federative system then in some way needs or implies
the state to develop a humanist essence, then it does not explain why late 19th
century Germany was able to federalize and not develop such an essence.
Instead, if federalizations are more pre-occupied with creating a custom-built
pole of influence in a Machiavellian world, then it does not matter what the
individual level security forms into (regarding individual rights of either
citizens or subjects) so long as the states are preserved in the ad-hoc
bandwagoning effect. If that is indeed the case, then federalizations cannot
claim any moral justification from preserving individual rights; considering
that Hendrickson’s argument does not have a response for this charge built into
his analysis of the federalization of the first American states, his ultimate
argument of what federalization truly wants to create in terms of security
fails.
Works
Cited
Hendrickson,
David C., Peace Pact: the Lost World of
the American Founding, The University Press of Kansas, 2003, Lawrence,
Kansas
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